Gulls
are mating. Last week I watched two starlings build a nest in an eave
and I applauded the effort. But the gulls, I don’t know; no
courtship, no shared experience, no fidelity.
I
want to pass on a healthy distrust of people to you. I want you to
know isolation. But solitude sounds nothing like a gift. And we are
not one another. I do not have your social graces. You say I dislike
people but I disagree. It is something else. If I pass it on to you
maybe you could name it.
Little
happens without a certain amount of abandon. There is a dent in my
desk from a chair I upended in an argument. If some things do not
matter then let the gulls fuck across every shingled peak, let the
ex-lovers quarrel. But I am unconvinced.
I
have seen the shape of you in someone’s arms. No, I have seen you
fold to a stranger’s touch. You are in the highest boughs with a
song and the wildest sways of the breeze. I am in the underbrush,
turning over damp brown leaves, convinced of some dark thing’s
existence.
Bruce Walsh
The
Sense of an Ending
Julian
Barnes